THE INSIDE TRACK : Morning Briefing : Thank You, but We’d Prefer Plain Old Golf

The English magazine Golf World International has come up with a recipe to flavor those dull moments between tour events. It has compiled a list of golfers “good enough to eat.” A menu of examples, with the magazine’s accompanying comments:

“Andy Bean, broad front-runner. Paul Curry, great takeaway. Terry Dill, sage of the seniors tour.”

It gets worse. There’s “Dottie Pepper, seasoned professional. Mark Roe, eggs himself on; Juan Nutt, crack under pressure.”

And worst of all: “Steve Flesch, Hannibal Lecter’s favorite dish.”

It’s food for thought.

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Trivia time: What sport is mentioned by name in the Jane Austen novel, “Northanger Abbey,” written in 1798?

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Deflated: Don’t count the Chicago Tribune’s Bernie Lincicome among the fans of Bear starting quarterback Shane Matthews.

“This guy is the original spare tire; not the one in the trunk, the one in the garage that you go to if the one in the trunk goes flat,” Lincicome wrote. “Matthews is the last resort, the player to be waived later, the designated driver of quarterbacks. And the Bears are going to start their comeback to glory with him?

“How awful must Cade McNown be?”

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He’s no homer: Is baseball rigging the game? Stan Olson of the Charlotte Observer wouldn’t bet against it.

“People keep trying to tell me the ball is not ‘juiced’ or wound more tightly than in the past,” he wrote. “They say all this slugging is merely a combination of poor pitching, a tiny strike zone, more weightlifting and smaller parks. I merely point to Jay Bell.”

Until 1997, the Arizona Diamondback second baseman had never hit more than 13 homers in a season, Olson pointed out, but in the last three years he has hit 21, 20 and, so far this season, 32.

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Phew: Arizona went to play Penn State, “hoping to make a lasting impression, and boy did they ever,” Arizona Republic columnist Dan Bickley said after the Nittany Lions’ 41-7 romp. “In the same manner that Limburger cheese adds presence to a refrigerator.”

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Gurgle: It’s not in the genes, obviously. Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe smashed world records in the Pan Pacific meet in Sydney, but his father, he says, can’t swim a stroke.

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They’re ready for the draft: Former Galaxy forward Eduardo Hurtado, now with the MetroStars, was being courted by the Miami Fusion, an idea that caught the fancy of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel’s Jeff Rusnak.

“The Ecuadorian enigma would be a great addition locally,” he wrote, “if only because the club could create a militarized marketing campaign that would pair ‘El Tanque’ [Hurtado] and ‘El Humvee’ [Diego Serna].”

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Trivia answer: Baseball.

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And finally: Florida Marlin pitcher Brian Meadows managed to put bat to ball in the fourth inning against Randy Johnson on the day when Johnson got his 300th strikeout of the season. How did Meadows do it?

“I started swinging in about the second inning,” he said.